Yosuke Matsuoka

Yosuke Matsuoka (3 March 1880-26 June 1946) was the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Japan from July 1940 to July 1941, succeeding Kichisaburo Nomura and preceding Teijiro Toyoda.

Biography
Yosuke Matsuoka was born on 3 March 1880 in Hikari, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan, the fourth son of a shipping magnate. In 1893, he was sent to the United States after his father went bankrupt, and he lived at a Methodist mission in Portland, Oregon before moving in with the Dunbar family and learning English. He became a Presbyterian while living in America, but he also worshipped at Buddha shrines back in Japan, viewing Christianity and Buddhism as compatible faiths. In 1900, he graduated from the University of Oregon law school, but he was forced to return to Japan in 1902 due to the declining health of his mother.

Matsuoka attended Tokyo Imperial University, but his lack of connections led to him studying to be a bureaucrat instead. Matsuoka passed the foreign service examinations, and he served at the Japanese consulate in Shanghai before working at the Japanese embassy in Washington DC and later in Manchuria. Matsuoka became the president of the South Manchuria Railway, and he developed conflicting political views; he was an admirer of the Italian National Fascist Party, but he also supported the plan to relocate Jewish refugees in Manchuria.

In July 1940, Matsuoka was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs under Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe. He was one of the principal orchestrators of the signing of the Tripartite Pact on 27 September 1940, believing that an alliance with Nazi Germany and Italy could balance the scales against the United States. Matsuoka met with German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and informed him that Japan was preparing to attack the United Kingdom's Royal Navy base at Singapore as Ribbentrop had suggested, with the majority of Royal Navy ships being deployed to the Atlantic Ocean. In June 1941, Adolf Hitler proposed that Japan should invade the Soviet Union to help Germany during Operation Barbarossa, and Matsuoka was in favor of the idea; however, the Japanese government decided to focus on China instead. Matsuoka was also in favor of war with America, so Prime Minister Konoe had him removed from office in July. He would regret entering the Tripartite Pact, and he died in Sugamo Prison in 1946 before he could be tried for his role in Japan's war of aggression.